The color reversal photographic material is demanded to provide excellent image quality the same as in a color negative photographic material.
As a means for improving the image quality, known is the method of adding a light-insensitive silver halide grain or colloidal silver to a light-sensitive emulsion layer and/or to a layer adjacent to the light-sensitive layer. For example, JP-A-51-128528 (corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 4,082,553, the term "JP-A" as used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application") describes a color reversal photographic material comprising a silver halide emulsion layer containing a silver halide grain with the surface being fogged to improve the interlayer effect. Further, JP-A-60-126652, JP-A-63-304252, JP-A-2-110539, JP-A-3-113438 and U.S. Pat. No. T979,001 describe a light sensitive material in which colloidal silver is incorporated to an emulsion layer or a layer adjacent thereto. However, although these patents surely realize the improvement in image quality, the following problems are still in need to be solved.
The color reversal photographic material is usually processed as follows.
An imagewise exposed color reversal photographic material is processed with a black-and-white negative developer called "first developer". The first developer usually contains a silver halide solvent such as rhodanate and sulfite and the development is a solution physical development. Then, silver halide grains which are neither exposed nor developed with the first developer are optically or chemically fogged and processed with a color developer called "second developer" to form a color positive image. Thereafter, the developed silver in the photographic material is bleached and fixed to provide a color reversal image.
In such a processing, it is well known that the solution physical development of light-sensitive silver halide grains at the first development is accelerated by adding silver halide with the light-insensitive surface or inside thereof being fogged or colloidal silver to a light-sensitive emulsion layer or a layer adjacent thereto. This means that the grain becomes susceptible to fluctuation in the rhodanate or sulfite content in the first developer, and this is verified in fact.
At city processing laboratories, the composition of developer is not always constant among laboratories and even in the same laboratory, the developer is in fact not controlled to have the composition in a constant range.
Accordingly, using the above-described photographic material greatly susceptible to the developer composition, a stable image can hardly be provided to users.
Under these circumstances, a photographic material capable of providing excellent image quality and processing stability has been demanded.